In today's content publishing environment, content may be generated and edited using a variety of editors, such as Microsoft Word, Web editors (e.g., Arbortext's Contributor), and Extensible Markup Language (XML) editors (e.g., Arbortext's Epic Editor). Similarly this content may be published to a variety of output media formats, including print, Portable Document Format (PDF), various forms of Hypertext Markup Language (HTML), Wireless Markup Language (WML), and PostScript. Content may also be published to compiled formats such as HTML-Help, MS Reader, formats for personal digital assistants (PDAs), and formats for mobile phones.
Currently, designers and programmers create separate stylesheets to output content with a desired layout for each desired output media format. A stylesheet typically includes information such as the font and margins, the formatting layout, and other types of information that define appearance of the outputted document. A stylesheet may be used to convert content from one format to another. For example, it may convert XML content to one of the various output media formats specified above.
Different stylesheets can be used to create different types of output for different types of devices, including differences in both content and layout. The need to perform this type of content tailoring is increasing rapidly as the popularity of new types of computing devices increases. One exemplary type is mobile devices, which typically have limited bandwidth, support fewer colors at a lower resolution and may not support audio content. Thus, XML documents originally created with the expectation that the document would be rendered on a full-function desktop computer screen or in a printed form may contain a significant amount of content that can not or should not be presented to a mobile device.
The stylesheets in the prior art are limited in that they are designed to generate output to only one specific output media format. If output to multiple formats is required, separate stylesheets must be created for each type of output. Along with the ever increasing number of display devices and display formats, there is an increasing need for a tool to automatically generate output to multiple output media formats. Thus, there is a need for a system for defining the specifications for outputting content to multiple output media formats, based on a single, multi-purpose stylesheet.